“This is the best sight I have ever seen,” cried the young physician, as they strolled along the Rue de Rivoli. “Why, it’s nearly as bright as Broadway.”
“What a thorough Yank you are, Bertie! Come here, now; just take a look around you, and confess that you are fairly dumbfounded.”
They stood at the Place de la Concorde. The fountains were throwing feathery sprays high in air; the flowers were blooming in a myriad hues. Thousands of vehicles were flashing past, tens of thousands of pedestrians. The great tide of human life had set in towards the Trocadero. Regiments in gorgeous uniforms, headed by bands playing superbly, marched onwards, quaint costumes of every nationality under the sun flitted by—bizarre groups chatting and laughing and gesticulating!
Behind them the blackened walls of the Tuileries, in front the Champs Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe, on the left the Chamber of Deputies, on the right the glorious Madeleine.
“It is magnificent,” exclaimed Bertie at length, in a subdued tone of emotion.
“Nearly as bright as Broadway,” laughed Kirwan.
“Wait! Twenty years, and our up-town will be as gorgeous as this. We have the taste, we have the money, all we want is the time; that we have not.”
“And never will have. We rush too much. But come along; we must be at the Exhibition building early or our chances of getting in will be a little thin. We shall have, as we say in New York, to take a back seat, doctor.”
“I should prefer to stop here. What a sight this is! What contrasts; how vivid! Look at that grim sergent-de-ville, and beside him that piquante girl in the Normandy cap as high as his cocked hat, and earrings as long as his sword. See that ouvrier in the blouse; how cheerfully he smokes his cigar, carrying his two children! I do believe he would carry his wife into the bargain. How coquettishly she is attired, and how cheaply! See the artistic manner that two-dollar shawl is draped over her shoulder, and how that five-cent ribbon hangs. I’ll wager that these fellows coming along as if walking on air are of the Quartier Latin, the students’ quarter. They, poor fellows! have come to see the crowd. I suppose their united wealth at this moment will scarcely do more than omelette and beer them. What flashing equipages! How beautifully finished! We do want these liveries in Central Park. Imagine those yellows, and purples, and blues, and saffrons, and whites glancing amongst our green trees or up Fifth Avenue. What cavalry! How superbly those dragoons sit their horses—Centaurs every man of them. It must have been by sheer force of numbers that they bit the dust in the late war. What fountains! what flowers! what trees—four rows of them up to that magnificent arch—and what residences!” gushed Bertram Martin.
“These gilded pagodas, and Swiss chalets, and marble palaces, and fairy bowers are for open-air concerts. Wait till you see them lighted up, and I tell you what it is, Bertie, you’ll go into raptures. Why, no tale in the Arabian Nights equals them for glitter. And the music, my boy, sparkles like champagne,” cried Kirwan enthusiastically.